The Fellowship Has Been Disbanded. :[

The last of the team has been disbanded, as Jenn, Enoch, and myself (Steven) said bye to Chrissie and Peter at the Taipei airport. We’re here killing time with an 8 hour layover before we head back to the States. James reached HK and his family on Wednesday, and Benry has been home for a week but apparently has strep throat. Pray for his health!

There will probably be one more concluding post with some last prayer requests and takeaways, but for now, please pray that we would have traveling mercies, good health, and no spiritual “crash” after 3 weeks. Pray for protection and a continual seeking of God’s presence and voice!

We’re coming home! See you in 29 hours, Austin!

-Steven

Update: 7/6

Hello everyone! I hope this blog post finds you well!

These last few days have been restful and exciting as we wind down to the end of our trip. It is hard to believe that today is our last day. There isn’t much to do today, given that half of our team is gone. Peter will be engaging in some hard labor while Chrissie and I will be visiting some friends of YWAM and hopefully meeting up with some students we met earlier this week.

Here is a brief recap of the last few days. Everyone has their own stories so I’ll try my best to hit the shared highlights!

Tuesday started off with conversational evangelism at the ram2 campus. It definitely isn’t as easy as Chiang Mai university but Thai students are still very nice to foreigners and we have had some great talks. Mainly we passed out fliers for Tuesday worship nights at bjd. I have definitely felt the Lord making me bolder and more willing to be foolish for him. It is fun and exciting because you never know who God is preparing!

The afternoon was spent with Gregg Nicholson, the only westerner on the Thai national church growth committee. He has been in Thailand for over twenty years and inspired us with much wisdom for our next steps and also insights into the state of the country and church.

We ended the day with a worship night where Steven was drafted last minute to play in a 90 minute set. Chrissie and I were also able to share our testimonies which was incredibly scary but also such a blessing. It was just so wonderful to worship with brothers and sisters.

Wednesday we lost James and we were all a little sadder. We started in prayer for Thailand with the bjd staff and then prayer walks/conversational evangelism. Chrissie, steven, and I met with two girls (B and K) who ended up coming back with us for coffee and also let the girls on the team take them to the mall. We didn’t shop too much but sat down for ice cream where I got to share my testimony. The girls had a lot of questions which were promptly answered by our translator who is legit and awesome. We also had the chance to pray for healing for a headache and saw immediate results! Praise God!

Meanwhile, the guys got to play some basketball with some students and prepared bjd for an English party of snacks and group games.

We all got back together just in time for the English party where we saw our new friends B and K warmly welcomed and incorporated through screaming vikings. They also had more spiritual conversation with the staff there. Keep praying! We have such high hopes for them and all the other students learning English at bjd!

Post English party we debriefed and checked out a market with 30 cent pad see ew. Delicious!

Thursday we lost Steven and Enoch but the team still lives! Peter, Chrissie, and I went to campus to meet some people. We had some good talks, a highlight being a conversation with a student who spoke Chinese! It felt so nice to not have a language barrier and I was so excited to share my story with her and answer some questions. Pray that she comes back to bjd and gets plugged in!

After lunch, we got to serve by cleaning up bjd…which mainly consisted of us being politely ushered to the side as the staff redid all of our work. I should have done more chores as a kid.

Our day ended with a fun yet awkward thai massage. We got to pray for our masseuses and get to know them a bit as well. Lots of fun.

Prayer points!

Protection and health - we have not had the best health this trip. Mainly coughs and mosquito bites now, but still pray for stomachs and colds. Also, pray for continual unity in our team as we still are learning about each other and pursuing healthy confrontation.

Intimate time with God - for the rest of this trip and for the times after. As the days get less busy, pray that we would use our time wisely to connect with God and process this trip well. Pray this especially for James and Benry who are not with our team at the moment.

Perseverance - even with one last day, we want to finish strong by continuing to build relationships and praying boldly. Pray that we would continue to expect great things from God today and into our time back home as well.

Traveling mercies - pray for logistics and transfers and rides! Also, I personally am prone to nausea and air sickness. Pray that we all pass out on the planes and wake up at home!

Again, we cannot stress how grateful and blessed we are to have you all praying for us. This trip has gone incredibly smoothly and I firmly believe it is because of the faithful intercession of our family. God has so blessed us this trip, these updates cannot do it justice. Praise the Lord you have all been a part of it! Can’t wait to see everyone!

Love,

Jenn Huang

Quick Update (before we run out of internet for the night!)

Last couple of days in Bangkok have been good and restful.

We visited a red light district last night with someone who does ministry there. It was extremely powerful for all of us.

Today we got to talk with someone on the national church planting board about Thailand and where we could fit in for the future. It was enlightening to say the least. He’s the last “expert” we’re talking to, but everyone here has been pouring wisdom into us anyways. All of us have sort of taken a water hose of information for the last 3 weeks and will be debriefing/sifting through what God is telling us from it. BJD worship was also tonight and we got to start a bit of evangelism/relationship building at the university across the street.

Prayer Requests

  • Protection - Though there has been victory the last few days, Satan continues to attack our identity in Christ. Please continue to pray gospel truths over us to fight off the lies of the enemy
  • Traveling - James is leaving tomorrow morning, and Steven and Enoch are leaving Thursday and getting back in Friday night before we all leave Saturday (Benry has already arrived back). Please pray for safe travel and a good transition back to wherever we will be spending the next few weeks after Thailand. Post-mission trips can be tough.
  • BJD ministry - We’ll be hosting an English party tomorrow! Please be praying for relationships to be formed as we go out to evangelize, and for people to come out and get connected with BJD.
  • Wise use of remaining time - As we near the end, with people leaving and going in and out (at one point, it will just be Chrissie, Jenn, and Peter), please pray for a wise use of our time in ministry as well as debriefing. We are confident God will still do great things, so pray for boldness to not live meekly just because we’ll be leaving soon!

Thanks everyone! See y’all soon!

-Peter

Update: 7/2

Happy Canadia Day everybody!

We are currently back in Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit, or for short, Bangkok.

Friday:

We continued ministry with Wongen Kafe, a coffee shop that does ministry with Chiang Mai University [CMU]. Through developing relationships and teaching English, they reach out to college students. They are under Lighthouse, which does some super cool stuff in the city. Check out their website!

We had the opportunity to wander around the ginormous campus of CMU, meeting the university students, developing relationships with them, and inviting them to Wongen Kafe. At night, they hosted an Open Mic Night, where different people can play music, sing, dance, etc. Our very own Peter & Benry performed several songs…and made the girls swoon.

Afterwards, we flew back to Bangkok, where we’ll be working with Baan Jai Diaow [BJD] for the remainder of our time in Thailand.

Saturday:

Sabbath! Slept in, went to JJ Market [largest weekend market in Thailand], ate dinner at CentralWorld mall, then watched SPIDERMAN!!!

Sunday:

We had the privilege of visiting a church, called Nexus Christian Church, recommended to us by multiple missionaries. It’s one of the larger churches in Bangkok, at around 600 people, filled with mostly young people, similar to the Stone. Basically everything about the worship service was great. We were swarmed by uber hospitable people, the worship was Spirit-filled, the message was legit, an altar call led to several people giving their lives to Christ, and we joined in some rich intercessory prayer time. Very blessed morning.

Later in the afternoon, we met with one of our new friends, Michael, who works with YWAM Bangkok, to play ultimate frisbee. Dinner after that, and by then, it was bedtime. End of weekend.

Prayer Requests

  • Intimacy with the Holy Spirit - Pray for our individual times with the Lord, our group times of worship and prayer, and our incessant prayer throughout the day. Pray that they would be saturated with His presence, and as a result, we would walk with a child-like dependency and child-like faith yielding completely to the HS.
  • Protection - Though we do not fear the work of Satan, we are aware that we are like sheep among wolves. He is out to devour us. And so, as we continue to pray on the armor of God each day, we ask that you do the same for us as well. Pray for the blood of Jesus to cover us, that we would only yield to the voice of the Spirit and not the voice of the enemy.
  • Ministry - We’ll be working with BJD, reaching out to students at Ramkhamhaeng University. Pray for fruitful ministry, for fertile soil, and for students to understand and receive the love of Jesus Christ. Pray that as we bless the Thai, we would see some radical workings of the HS, in miracles and healings, that would open the door for the Gospel and for salvation. Pray for more radical professions of faith.

We are so greedy and so desperate for your prayers, brothers and sisters. Please, please, please continue to intercede for us, not simply on our behalf, but for the sake of Jesus and the work He wants to do in this nation. Without your prayer, pleading for God to stretch out his hand to save and pushing against the darkness of the enemy, we can do very, very little. But are confident, that as we unite as the Church, under Christ, we will see God vindicate His holy name in Thailand, for His glory and for the joy of all peoples.

Enoch

Just a reminder: God is real.

Well then.

Today, we got to share the Gospel and pray for Buddhist monks at a temple, saw a 71 year-old man get saved (which means the 2 generations under him will probably soon follow), and saw a man get baptized after praying for him in the hospital.

God is real, He is loving, and He is moving.

Longer update coming — we got some cool things to bring back to Austin.

Continue to pray for us as we have one last day in Chiang Mai; we are excited because the last days of this trip will be evangelism and I think we’ll continue to see some really cool things of God in the coming days. Please pray for us!

-Steven

Halfway Point

Hi everyone!

Today marks the halfway point of our trip. I’ll quickly recap some of the higher level themes of the first half, give you our plans for the rest of the trip, and then prayer requests.

If you just want prayer requests, skip to the bottom.

What’s Happened So Far:

  • Orientation/Acclimation: Our first couple days of the trip in LA and Bangkok were filled with really good team times, prayer times, and generally getting acclimated to Thailand. It helped us focus on the upcoming days after leaving a busy schedule in Austin.
  • Ministry in Chiang Mai: We arrived in Chiang Mai last Wednesday, 7 days ago. Since then, we’ve mainly been doing ministry at Abba House, teaching English and Bible studies with the New Life guys. We’ve also had English times (see: game time) with the Abba House girls. The days have been long and tiring, and sometimes ministry with the New Life guys is hard. The kids are a joy, but it takes a lot of our energy as well. It’s been humbling to be reminded that our motivation for ministry is not in the success of our ministry or the capacity of our own selves, but on God and our joy in Him.
  • Meetings with Christian Influencers: We’ve been ridiculously blessed to meet the influential leaders that we have over the last week. We got to meet the number one Christian researcher in Thailand, giving us a 30,000 foot view of Christianity and the church’s needs in Thailand. We also got to meet a church planter who is on the ground living out T4T here in Thailand. These meetings give us a lot of encouragement and hope in what God is doing in Thailand, and helps us to gain a greater perspective of how we fit into God’s movement in the future. (At different points, these quotes happened: “I took Francis Chan on his first missions trip.” “I was on the elders team that selected David Platt to be the next pastor.” “My mom worked with John Piper 30 years ago, here’s this picture.” Yeah.. suffice it to say, way over our heads.)
  • Overall, at least from my perspective, we’ve had some really up and really down times. Some meetings and ministry times fill us with a lot of joy and excitement, and other times we are really tired or ministry is hard. There is some lingering sickness going around, and generally I think our team is pretty tired. But I believe that God has orchestrated every moment of this trip in a certain way for a reason, and we wait on the Spirit to reveal what it is he wants us to do.

Upcoming:

  • We have two more days here in Chiang Mai with a ministry called Lighthouse, which is located right across from Chiang Mai University. We haven’t gotten to do much evangelism up to this point, so a few of us are really excited to see how God will move.
  • After that, we return to Bangkok on Friday night for a much needed rest day on Saturday. (Benry leaves Saturday morning.) Sunday, we go to Nexus Church, one of the growing churches for young people in Bangkok, who are doing cool things in the city for Jesus.
  • Monday thru Friday will be a combination of more meetings with missionaries and pastors, and more college ministry/evangelism with BJD. (Wednesday morning, James leaves.) Enoch and I (Steven) go to Singapore on Thursday & Friday to met with friends, and we all leave Thailand on Saturday morning.

Prayer Requests:

  • Nearness with the Spirit: If anything, we’ve been humbled again to realize that we can do nothing apart from the Spirit. He leads us supernaturally, gives us grace and love to give others, gives us strength to do ministry. Without him, we can do nothing. Pray that we would enter to a fullness and nearness to the Holy Spirit like we have never encountered. Pray that he would manifest supernaturally in the form of gifts, signs, and miracles.
  • Strength, Healing, and Protection: Between our general tiredness and physical sickness (Steven, Jenn, and Benry are coughing, and Peter just came down with a fever today), we really need prayer. Pray that even in our tiredness, we would show grace and put the other people on our team above one another. Pray for healing from our sicknesses so we can better minister how God wants us to. And continue to cover us in intercession to protect us from the Enemy and his distractions.
  • Ministry and Meetings: Pray that God would use us powerfully and reveal Himself to us and to the Thais that we meet in our upcoming ministry times. Pray that we would continue to gain wisdom and perspective on our futures from these awesome men and women of God that we are meeting for the rest of our trip.
  • Team Unity: It has been a bit rocky at times (as expected), what with long days and close proximity. Pray that God would bring us closer in love for one another, and that we would continually show grace to each other. Pray that we would love one another as Christ loved us, so that the world may know we are his disciples.

Thanks for reading and praying for us. As we move into the second part, we really, really, really need your prayers and your protection. We are so grateful and miss all you guys. Above all, may God glorify His Son in Thailand and in all the nations! And may we all draw near to Him, although He has never been far.

-Steven

EDIT: PRAY FOR PETER! He’s got a fever and won’t be joining us for at least this morning’s activities. Pray pray pray please. Thanks!

Update: 6/26

Good Thai morning everyone!

Our prayer requests for the day:

  • The days have been long and full, and our team is pretty tired. Pray that the Lord would be our strength, and we would show each other even more love and grace even in our times of tiredness.
  • Along with the days being full, many of us are hungry for longer/extended periods of time alone with Jesus. Pray that there would be time in the schedule for us to seek out his face.
  • This morning, we are going to meet one of the top Christian researchers in Thailand, in terms of where Christians need to go in Thailand. Pray that we would receive a greater perspective of what God wants us to do in Thailand long-term, if He is calling us in that way.
  • We have 2 more days at Abba House before going over to Chiang Mai University; pray that we would continue to have great times of fellowship, and hopefully discipleship, with the New Life guys and Abba House kids.

Thanks everyone! We miss you all. It’s coming up on the halfway point of our trip, so we’re excited for what God has in store the rest of the way! Please continue to pray that the Spirit would be the one leading us in everything!

-Steven

The Last 4 Days (Fri-Mon)

Hello folks. Here is our promised longer update. We apologize for the delays. We’ll try to do shorter updates when we wake up in the morning before ministry each day so you guys can pray (those would come up around the evening time for y’all). Kind of like the last 2. Then we’ll have longer ones to recap a few days in a row.

Since our last long update we’ve continued our ministry at the Abba House with the kids and the New Life guys, visited an elephant resort on our Sabbath, had church, hung out with the Abba House kids in multiple places, and went to a prison to speak for some of the Christian inmates.

If you just want prayer requests, go to the bottom of the post.

New Life Guys Ministry - We’ve had 3 sessions with these guys so far. It’s been great to see them open up more and share more of our stories and the gospel with them. Our original plan was to keep the format that they structured for us (1 hr of music, 1 hr of english classes, 1 hr of bible study), but we changed it up today. For those of you accustomed with T4T, we taught the 1st lesson with them. The times have been good, but also challenging. These guys aren’t the most talkative and are at varying degrees of dedication. But even with the language barrier and multiple walks of faith, we are making progress.

Abba House Kids - English classes with the girls have been great. They’re not shy at all. Teaching english and playing games is always a blast. Much of the ministry with these kids is to simply be with them and play. The older kids know some english, but talking is still difficult. Most are Christian as well, but some aren’t. So the greatest testimony we can give these kids since we only have 1 translator to split among all of us is to love them. Whether that’s playing with them in the public pool, or running around with them, anything we can do so they know they’re loved is part of our ministry. For all of us, it has been a joy. It has also been extremely exhausting. Kids have loads of energy. LOADS.

Abba Church - This is held at Abba House and is mostly for the kids and the New Life guys. There are a few other members from around the neighborhood too. Worship and sharing went well. Benry and Enoch both shared on God’s love for us and His promises for us to be with us to the ends of the earth as we share His love. Afterwards we all ate together and the kids had some more music classes with Pastor Ed (who is an absolute hoss at basically everything). Pastor Ed helps out with Abba House, New Life, and does prison ministry.

Prison - This was a new experience for all of us. Pastor Ed is the chaplain there now and goes each week to minister to the inmates. The spiritual revival happening there is absolutely nuts. The prison is meant for only 3,000 people, but at a time held 5,000. As the gospel was introduced to the prison, people started getting saved left and right. There are currently over 700 Christians of the 3,800 inmates. That percentage blows Thailand’s Christian percentage out of the water (1%). For a while they were baptizing people in an old oil drum and had a waiting line because they could only baptize 20 people at a time. Now they have a portable baptism kit (that Mark actually brought with us on our last trip to Thailand).

We got to play some songs with them, Steven and James shared their testimonies, we took communion together, and Mark gave a short message and altar call. Afterwards we were able to pray for healing and give out some shampoo and soap we bought for them. It was odd being in a room where interaction is very much restricted. Many of us hoped to talk to them, shake their hands, hug them, something, but we couldn’t. Despite the barriers, the Word was still preached and those in the room (they could only fit about 80 people) were all Christians. They go out and share what they’ve learned to the other Christians that couldn’t fit in the large room.

Other Activities (Elephants, Night Markets, etc) - Team unity was gotten much better since the first few days. Hanging out at the elephant resort was great and we’ve been able to pray with and for each other much more often. Each time we go out we are seeking the Spirit’s guidance on who we can talk with and for opportunities to share the gospel. 

Future plans - In the next few days we’ll be meeting up with some pretty experienced people in the Thailand mission field. Tonight we’re talking to the leader of the group the Chens are with. They are very gifted and experienced in Spirit-led evangelism and disciple-making. Tomorrow we’ll be talking to one of the best Christian researchers for the nation to help us gain more insight on how Christianity is doing in Thailand and where we can go to partner.

PRAYER REQUESTS: 

  • Continual protection for our team’s unity and alone time with our Father since our busy schedule has us constantly moving without as much rest as we’re used to
  • New Life guys’ hearts to open up to His love more and be bold to share about it
  • Abba House girls’ hearts to allow God’s love to heal and root deeply in their souls
  • Prison Christians inmates to grow in their intimacy with Christ and bring more to Jesus
  • All of our meetings with Thai missionaries. For discernment, humility, and more wisdom on how to serve God in the nation.

Thank you all for your support! Keep the prayers coming. God is doing big things among our team and this nation, and much of it is because of your prayers!

Until next time.

-Peter

Quick Update!

We’ll have a longer recap post later today, but right now we just wanted to send out some prayer requests to you all!

  • Enoch and Benry are about to give short sermons to the kids and staff at Abba House Church. Please pray that the Spirit would speak through them and their speaking would minister to those who hear!
  • Please continue to pray for spiritual protection, as we’ve encountered some spiritual warfare, especially around team unity. Pray that Christ would be the head of our team and that the Spirit would give us all abundant peace and love for each other.
  • We’ll update more on our upcoming week, but pray that God would release more of His Spirit so that we could hear his voice — we have a lot of opportunities this week and want to hear from God alone!

Thanks so much for praying! We really need your prayers as we enter into week 2. A longer post to come!

-Steven